Do they have to whip the horse?

I'm not a big horse racing fan, or any racing for that matter, but Saturday's Kentucky Derby was a fun one to watch. Street Sense came from 19th (out of 20!) to win. It was a perfect sporting event for me; lots of pomp, tradition, and it's over in 2 minutes. Heck, the queen even came over to see it. If NBA and NFL games would be that short, I could be a fan of those, too.

Back to the Derby, there's no way to watch the video without bobbing up and down to the clomp clomp clomp of the hooves, as the track announcer gets more and more excited.

I then asked the question, "Do they have to whip the horse?"

Going to Google, I found a lot of disturbing sites about the mistreatment of race horses, from how they are bred and raised, broken, trained, and raced. The general consensus was that whipping has little or no effect on the speed of the horse, and may actually slow them down.

I was so excited by the race, then disappointed in what I found out when I dug a little deeper.

Look what else they had at the Derby: Barbershop Singing!